Close up flowers

At the weekend I purchased a photography magazine to see if it had any interesting content and to see if I could learn a bit more about the functions of my camera (I must be turning into a bit of a geek!). I must have chosen a good magazine as it seemed to explain things in a language I could understand, but I think without dumbing it down too much. One article that I found to be particularly fun was a tutorial on how to take close up snaps of flowers without extra expensive equipment. Here are my attempts!

I love how these Gerberas look close up. I like how you can see detail you might not normally notice.

The article suggested you could buy a piece of coloured card from an art shop, but I thought I'd improvise instead. The dark blue background above is the back of the bodyboard I bought last year in Cornwall, the orange background is my camping roll mat, and the white background is the wall of the house.

I'd like to go and take some pictures of Daffodils while it's still Spring, but it's going to have to be less windy than it has been or they won't stand still long enough to take a picture!

Angelic details, and an interesting discovery

Below I took some fun pictures of another one of Katie Duxbury's costumes. This is an 'Angel' costume, which is made from lots of different textures and materials, including reflective fabrics so it can be photographed in the dark. This link shows pictures of when she took pictures of it last year in the countryside near Lancaster

http://duxburycostume.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/angelic-appearances.html

 I like taking pictures really close up which show off all the little details that Katie has included.

And now to my 'interesting discovery'. Well, it was interesting to me anyway. My phone was sitting on the table in front of me, and as I had nothing better to do I took a picture of it. When I focused on the phone, the lights reflecting on the screen looked all blurry. But then I realised that I could adjust the focus so that it picked up the reflection, rather than the phone itself. Perhaps this could make for an interesting effect in a more interesting subject matter some other time. 

Waterfall experimentalising

Following the walkies at Ullswater earlier on today, I had enough time to pause on the way home and take some more photos at Millerground, which is just outside Bowness. I knew there was a nice stream, but I'd forgotten there was this rather pretty little waterfall. I wasn't the other person with a camera snapping away!

 I really like the effect of the water streaming by when I set the camera to a longer than normal shutter speed.

The pictures below were all taken from the same spot, but I made the shutter length increasingly smaller to see just how much it altered the appearance of the photo. I found it interesting how the bottom picture captured the image with such a quick shutter speed, that the camera could distinguish water drops and splashes that my own eyes could not!

Wet and Windy Wainwright Walkies

Today I set off on a walk with Bec and her boyfriend's dog Korah. The forecast was not set to be particularly good, very windy, but supposedly improving as the afternoon went on. I packed Niki into a very waterproof bag (the kind that should still be ok if you threw it in a lake), just in case the weather cleared enough to take some snaps.

 We chose a walk near Ullswater up a couple of Wainwright hills as Bec is trying to check them all off (and I admit I'm keeping a tally of how many I've done too). About half way up Arnison Crag, we stopped for a breather and noticed a rather stunning rainbow which stretched right across the lake. We quickly dug in our bags for our cameras so try and capture the moment. Below I tried editting my picture with the selective colour mode on my camera to see if I could get the rainbow to stand out. The problem I found was that the way my camera works, if I selected the red in the rainbow, it would show all the places in the picture which were coloured red, and then if you select yellow it will pick out all the yellows in the whole picture. By the time you've gone through every colour in the rainbow, then you don't have a selective colour photo anymore! This was the best version I managed to get.

Here is Korah. It was quite difficult to get her to stand still for a photograph!

 Bec tried enticing her with a biscuit so that she'd look in my direction and stand still.

 The picture below is my favourite one of her, I like how she stands out from the background, but you can still see that she;s up in the mountains.

 Pictured here is Arnison Crag, our first Wainwright, taken from our way down Birks, which was our second and final Wainwright of the day. Above is the original picture, straight from the camera. Below is an editted version of the same picture. I editted it on 'microsoft office picture manager' which is just the program that was already on my computer. It doesn't have many different options for editing the snaps, but I played around until I got this which I think looks much better than the original.

Evening clouds and signs of Spring

On the way home from work I noticed the clouds were making interesting patterns in the sky. I decided to go out and take some pictures before the pretty shapes disappeared altogether!

 I liked the whispy lines the clouds formed. Unfortunately I think it's the first step in the clouds thickening which will result in tomorrow not being as nice as today was.

 In order to take my sky pictures, I ventured down a footpath that was previously undiscovered by me. The hedgerows were displaying some of the first signs of spring; some fresh buds ready to open. Maybe one day when I have more time I will explore further down this path and see what else I find.

A walk on Birkrigg Common

After yet another good weather day, I wanted to go for outside for a little bit in the evening. We parked up at a nearby area of moorland called Birkrigg Common for a bit on an explore. I took Niki along in case of good photo snap places. Having failed to capture the solar eclipse with my old camera due to forgetting to replace the memory card I recently removed, I thought I'd see if I could get a picture of the moon instead. It looks kind of the same...

 I used the trig point that T-J was sitting on in the previous photograph as a handy tripod, as I would stand no chance of holding the camera still for long enough otherwise! The picture below was taken with a longer exposure than the one above. I like how the colours of the sky are exaggerated.

A sunny Thursday off work

It was such a nice day on Thursday that it seemed a shame to spend the whole day inside. My husband had the car so I decided I would walk from the house and explore the local area better. 

 My walk took me through the woods where I took a picture of these flower buds about a week ago. Now the flowers have bloomed and they are very pretty! :D

 I had time to take some more pictures of the river to try and capture the moving water. 

 The Hoad Hill Monument is a very eye-catching feature in the local landscape. I like how you can see it from all around the local area.

 Back home in the evening I didn't have much else to do so I hunted around for things to take silly pictures of. This sparkly scarf is one that I made myself a couple of years ago. I like how in the picture some of the sequins are in clear focus, and others in the background are a colourful glow.

When I had finished unleashing the photographic potential of my scarf, I decided it was time to pester T-J. He was amusing himself with his computer games, so I amused myself by taking silly snaps of him. 

A night time walk up Hoad Hill

Niki the camera came with me again for another adventure, this time up the hill in Ulverston to look down at all the lights in the town.

These second two pictures were taken from near the bottom of the hill. The trees were making interesting silhouettes with the street lights and supermarket floodlights behind them.

Pretty skies and shutter speeds

After a spot of climbing at Hare Crag at the weekend, I got the camera out to take a picture of the view down Eskdale. The sky was very dramatic and I wanted try different things to see how the pictures came out. The three pictures below were taken with increasingly long shutter speeds. I wanted the picture to show the light beaming down through the clouds, but I didn't want the colours of the landscape to be lost completely.

This last picture seems to show the colours of the ground more, though the sky looks less dramatic as a consequence. Perhaps the middle picture is the best compromise.